


They Do Things Differently There

by Kroki_Refur



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-25
Updated: 2007-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:48:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27493726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kroki_Refur/pseuds/Kroki_Refur
Summary: The future changes all the time, and maybe so does the past. And then there are some things that never change at all.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	They Do Things Differently There

  
“In some cultures,” says Sam, “people see the past as in front and the future as behind.”  
  
Dean manfully resists the urge to strangle him, tries to think of a pun or at least a fucking dirty joke ( _behind_ – there’s gotta be something in there, right? Right?), and finally settles for rolling his eyes. “In some cultures,” he says, getting Sam’s look-at-me-I-am-the-source-of-all-wisdom inflection down _pat_ , thank you very much, “men with hair like yours are considered to be pretty, pretty princesses.”  
  
Sam glares. “Shut up,” he says. “Long hair is a sign of virility in--”  
  
“Oh my God, kill me now,” groans Dean, and Sam’s mouth snaps shut. He fumes for a minute or two, then turns back to the laptop.  
  
“I don’t see you coming up with anything useful,” he says.  
  
And it’s true, Dean isn’t. The only thing Dean is doing right now is panicking, and covering it up. Neither of those things is particularly helping, but he’s damn good at both, so he keeps right on doing them.  
  
“Because,” says Sam, “we can see what’s happened in the past, but not what’s going to happen in the future.”  
  
“I hope my future has plenty of behind in it,” says Dean ( _Jesus Christ, lame_ ), and tries really, really hard not to throw up.  
  
\----  
  
“In there,” says Sam, and Dean doesn’t hesitate, moves forward, gun at the ready. It’s black as the inside of a cat, no stars even, and no streetlights way out here in the middle of nowhere to reflect off the clouds.   
  
“Jesus, it’s dark,” he mutters, trying to see where the door of the shack is.  
  
“Just wait till it starts raining,” says Sam, then “wait.”  
  
Dean stops right where he is. Sam’s to his left and a little behind, and Dean can practically _hear_ him thinking. “Dude, I’m freezing my ass off here,” he says finally, and Sam shifts and sighs and Dean knows he forgot.  
  
“Right,” he says, “right. Go-- go left when you get inside. Like, straight away, OK?”  
  
“OK,” says Dean.  
  
He dives left when the warped door swings open, and a knife embeds itself in the doorframe just behind where his face was a second before. Damn thing’s fast, but Dean is faster, and he has one major advantage: he has Sam. The fight’s over in ten, the thing vanquished in twenty-five.  
  
As they leave the shack, it starts to rain.  
  
\----  
  
Dean tells Sam stories, sometimes. He likes to vary them, although Sam’s always happy to hear the same ones over and over. He gets so he knows exactly how Sam’s going to react to each one, is able to pull out just the right one to counteract whatever mood Sam happens to be in -- _remember when Dad caught Dana Hudson blowing me in the Impala_ to make Sam forget to brood, _remember when you fell in Lake Huron in the middle of winter_ to make him forget to feel guilty, _remember when we killed the Demon_ to make him forget to be afraid. Dean always starts his stories with _remember when_ , but he never stops feeling ashamed for trying to make Sam forget.  
  
\----  
  
It’s been a year, and life isn’t _normal_ , but it never has been for either of them, so Dean can live with that. They stop by the Roadhouse, and it’s only been eighteen months since they finished rebuilding the place, but it already looks old, like it’s the spirit of the place that counts and not the timbers.  
  
“Haven’t seen you boys in a while,” says Ellen, dropping longnecks in front of them.   
  
Sam’s eyes twitch in Dean’s direction, and Dean mouths _Ellen_ and wonders what that means, that Sam doesn't remember her. Then he grins as wide as he can, pulling attention to himself. “Been busy,” he says. “Got a lot of work.”  
  
“So I hear,” says Ellen. “You boys are the talk of the town, speed you been putting cases down. Folks starting to wonder if you got some kind of super powers.”  
  
She looks at Sam, and Dean starts making some comeback, _look at me, not him, he’s not ready, dammit_ , but Sam shrugs ruefully and says “Just lucky, I guess. No more super powers than you might expect.”  
  
He holds Ellen’s eyes as he tips back his beer, and Ellen raises an eyebrow, then nods. “About time you boys had some luck,” she says.  
  
\----  
  
Dean still calls Bobby every now and then, and Bobby always says the same thing. _No references, nothing. I’ll call you when I find something out._ He always says it like that, _when_ , not _if_ , but Dean hears the _if_ behind his words, and it gets louder every time. One day, Bobby says _it’s not so bad, though, right? Gotta come in handy sometimes. I hear you boys been putting a lot of cases down._   
  
Dean hangs up, and bundles Sam into the car. It takes them two days to get to South Dakota, and Bobby comes out to meet them, looks surprised, a little worried.   
  
“Dean?” Sam mutters.  
  
“Don’t know,” says Dean, and yeah, he's taking advantage of Sam, but Bobby needs to _know_. “Never seen the guy before.”  
  
Bobby opens his mouth, but Sam steps forward, smiling brightly, holds out a hand. “Sam Winchester,” he says. “Pleased to meet you, Mr....?”  
  
Bobby looks like he's been punched, but Dean doesn't feel guilty (although he does feel a pang that he refuses to acknowledge, because he thinks he knows now what it means when Sam doesn't remember someone). Sam refuses to speak to Dean on the drive back, but it’s worth it, because he couldn’t bear Bobby thinking that it’s _not so bad_.  
  
\----  
  
Sam’s been making this face all morning, and Dean’s gotten pretty used to that, knows it’s bad. “What,” he says finally, not really feeling like playing guessing games any more.  
  
Sam shakes his head. “Let’s just... stay here tonight, OK?”  
  
Dean sighs. “We’ve been through this before,” he says, and he knows that’s not fair, he _knows_ it, but this whole thing makes him so tired. “Is it bad?”  
  
Sam looks away and opens his mouth, and Dean thinks _he’s going to lie_. Then his shoulders slump. “Could be worse,” he says.  
  
“Then we’re going,” says Dean.  
  
When they get back to the motel, Dean cursing and bleeding all over his goddamn shirt, the suture kit is already laid out on the table; Dean’s gotten pretty used to that, as well.  
  
\----  
  
Sam tries to explain how he does it sometimes, how he manages to carry on a life that looks normal from the outside, but it makes Dean’s head hurt. There’s a lot about _context_ and _predictability_ and _continuity_ , and sometimes Sam will say something about how everyone can see just a few seconds into the future with reasonable accuracy, because with the exception of the occasional freak event, the world is a pretty predictable place in the short-term. _It’s like crossing the street_ , he says. _Your mind can work out how long cars are going to take to reach you and whether they’re likely to turn or not pretty well without you even having to think about it; that’s like seeing the future. That's what I do, only the other way round._  
  
Dean tries to wrap his head round it, but it doesn’t work. _It’s like living backwards_ , he says.  
  
Sam laughs. _That, too_ , he says.  
  
\----  
  
And then, sometimes Dean thinks he _does_ get it, like the time Sam tries to push him out of the path of a black dog and Dean pushes back like he knew exactly what Sam was going to do. He didn’t _see_ it, not like that, but he knew anyway, knew without thinking when he saw the thing bearing down on him because it’s what Sam _always_ does these days, no matter how many times Dean bawls him out. Bawling Sam out is kinda pointless now anyway, and holding a grudge is no goddamn fun when the person you’re holding it against has no idea what it’s all about, but Dean keeps thinking, _hoping_ that some of it is going to stick.  
  
The black dog does a number on him before Sam can shoot it, and he lies on his back staring up at the sky and thinking about how Sam can have a completely coherent conversation with someone even though he doesn’t even remember the beginning of the conversation, let alone the person’s name. It’s like crossing the street, or knowing that your dumb little brother’s going to try and get his ass killed to save yours. It’s like living backwards.   
  
It’s still living.  
  
\----  
  
“In some cultures,” says Sam, “people see the past as in front and the future as behind.”  
  
Dean rolls his eyes. “Check the front of the book, genius.”  
  
Sam flips to the front, sees the mark he always makes there when he’s finished checking through a book and forced Dean to remember everything he thinks is useful from it. “Oh,” he says. “Sorry. That’s really interesting, though.”  
  
“You keep using that word, I don’t think it means what you think it means,” says Dean, and Sam laughs in that way that means _I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I think I ought to, so I’m going to laugh anyway_.  
  
“Never mind,” Dean mumbles, but Sam’s getting up, crossing over to sit on the other bed.   
  
“You hate this,” he says.  
  
“No shit, Sherlock.” Dean is so not in the mood. “Don’t you?”  
  
Sam’s mouth twitches a little, then he shrugs. “I... guess. I mean, it’s kinda inconvenient, you know? But I don’t remember what it’s like to be any other way. The whole idea of – the way you do it, it’s just. It’s hard to imagine.”  
  
Dean snorts. “Never have thought you’d have a hard time imagining _normal_ , Sammy.”  
  
Sam’s silent for a minute, then he says, “Mostly, I hate that you hate it.”  
  
“Well, I guess you’re just going to have to forget that I do,” says Dean, and hates himself.   
  
“You’re an asshole, you know that?” Sam asks.  
  
And yeah, Dean knows.  
  
\----  
  
Ellen offers them a place to stay for the night, and they don't refuse. The beds are hard and narrow, but they've had worse, and they're among friends, which counts for a lot. Sam spends two hours drinking and laughing at the bar, and Dean thinks good things are on their way.  
  
"You remember this," he says when they turn in.   
  
Sam's eyes are already closed, face relaxing, and Dean tries to remember if there were days like this _before_ , days when Sam seemed like he didn't have a care in the world. "Yeah. We'll be here again."  
  
"Huh," Dean says.   
  
"What?" Sam sounds sleepy, like he doesn't really want to talk.  
  
"You just--" Dean stops. "You didn't last time."  
  
Sam opens his eyes then. "It must have been different then," he says. "Guess destiny's really a crock of shit, huh?"   
  
Dean puts out the light. He still doesn't get it, but he's getting closer all the time.  
  
\----  
  
“You’re going to get married in six years,” Sam announces.  
  
The ocean’s fucking loud, smashing against the beach, and Dean thinks he must have misheard. “What?”  
  
“Las Vegas,” says Sam. “Dude, that’s so tacky.”  
  
“I’m going to--” Dean stops. “When did this happen?”  
  
Sam shrugs. “It’s what I remember,” he says. “If I didn’t tell you before, I guess it must be new.”  
  
“Huh,” says Dean. Turns out the future changes all the time, and that’s another thing that’s hard to get used to. It took him a while to start asking, but once he did, Dean learned pretty soon that it was pointless, that every time he asked he would get a different answer (and Sam wouldn’t even remember the last time), and actually, that makes it better, kinda, because Dean's not really sure he wants to know. Plus, for all Sam's philosophising and shit, from what Dean can work out, it's not exactly like remembering, not like the way _Dean_ remembers stuff; it's hard to tell, because they don't have any common point of comparison, but the way he imagines it is in snatches and starts, snapshots telling a constantly-shifting story that Sam can't always quite fit together, like watching a David Lynch movie instead of a Ridley Scott. Trust Sam to be the goddamn artsy one. “We gonna have kids?”  
  
“Nah,” says Sam. “She’s gonna run off with a Chippendale.”  
  
Dean gapes for a moment, then launches himself. Sam doesn’t even try to dodge, crashes to the sand laughing his ass off, and doesn’t stop until Dean’s rubbed seaweed in his hair and made him cry uncle. Dean knows that Sam can keep things in his head if he keeps actively thinking about them ( _context, predictability, continuity_ ), and damn, he keeps thinking about this one for fifteen goddamn minutes, chuckling as he spits out the sand, and Dean would maybe be kinda pissed if he wasn’t still laughing himself.  
  
Finally, Sam settles down, lying on his stomach and picking crap out of his hair. “Tell me a story,” he says.  
  
Dean lies back too, folding his arms under his head and staring up at the seagulls wheeling up above. “Remember when we stole your fourth-grade teacher’s car and went to the beach?” he asks. Sam hums happily ( _he doesn’t remember_ ), and Dean tells the story, ice-cream and sunshine and the wind in their hair. Overhead, the sky is filled with high cloud, and Dean feels like there’s no-one in the world but him and Sam.  
  
“Did that really happen?” Sam asks when Dean’s finished, and Dean thinks he ought to be surprised, except for how everyone can see a few seconds into the future because the world’s a predictable place.  
  
“Nah,” he says. “We never even went to school in Florida.”  
  
Sam digs his fingers into the sand. “Good story, though,” he says, and Dean closes his eyes and can see it behind his eyelids, the sun sparkling off the sea and Sam ten years old and giggling like he’s about to die. No-one remembers their past now except him, so who’s to say it couldn’t have really happened that way?  
  
“I wasn’t kidding about the married part,” says Sam. “Just the Chippendale.”   
  
Dean props himself up on his elbows. “You been thinking about that this whole time?” he asks, but Sam must have been, because otherwise he wouldn’t remember.  
  
“It’s a nice thing to think about,” Sam says.   
  
Dean snorts. “It’ll be different by tomorrow,” he says. Six years is a long time, and the future changes every minute.  
  
“That’s OK,” says Sam. “It’s here now.” And sometimes, Dean thinks that too, because _now_ is the only time that matters any more, _now_ is the only time they have in common.  
  
Dean lets sand trickle through his fingers and tastes the salt on the air. It’s not OK, not really, it’s weird as hell and impossible to understand and the only goddamn thing that makes sense. It’s _context_ and _continuity_ and knowing someone so well you don’t need to be able to see the future ( _or the past_ ). It’s like living backwards.  
  
But it’s still living.


End file.
